Theresa May

Theresa May (1 October 1956-) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 13 July 2016, succeeding David Cameron. She served as the Conservative Party MP for Maidenhead from 1 May 1997, as Minister for Women and Equalities from 12 May 2010 to 4 September 2012 (succeeding Harriet Harman and preceding Maria Miller), and as Home Secretary from 12 May 2010 to 13 July 2016 (succeeding Alan Johnson and preceding Amber Rudd) before becoming Prime Minister and Conservative leader upon David Cameron's resignation, and her tenure was preoccupied with the process of Brexit, the British exit from the European Union.

Biography
Theresa Mary Brasier was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, England in 1956, and she grew up in Oxfordshire. From 1977 to 1983, she worked for the Bank of England, and from 1985 to 1997 at the Association for Payment Clearing Services. After unsuccessful 1992 and 1994 House of Commons campaigns, she was elected as the Conservative Party MP for Maidenhead in 1997. From 1999 to 2010, she held numerous Shadow Cabinet roles, and she was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003. In 2010, she was appointed to David Cameron's cabinet, serving as Minister for Women and Equalities from 2010 to 2012 and as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016. She pursued reform of the Police Federation, a harder line on drugs policy (including the banning of khat), oversaw the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners, the deportation of Abu Qatada to the United States, the creation of the National Crime Agency, and brought in additional restrictions on immigration. May became known as a liberal-conservative "One Nation" Tory, but she later became staunchly more conservative, anti-immigration, and isolationist than Boris Johnson.

Premiership
Following Cameron's resignation due to the success of the Brexit referendum in 2016, May won a July 2016 leadership election and became the new Conservative leader and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (the second female prime minister, after fellow Tory Margaret Thatcher). As Prime Minister, she began the process of withdrawing the UK from the European Union, and she held a snap general election in June 2017 with the goal of strengthening her hand in the Brexit negotiations. However, the elections backfired, as she lost her parliamentary majority due to Labour Party gains. May was forced to broker a confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, supporting a Conservative minority government. On 12 July 2018, she proposed the "Chequers plan" for Brexit, which proposed a free trade area for goods to maintain frictionless trade, supported by a common rulebook and a new facilitated customs arrangement. However, the plan was rejected by the EU on 21 September 2018.

May's economic policies were said to go further than the Labour Party's 2015 election manifesto, as she pledged to crack down on executive pay by making shareholders' votes binding rather than advisory and to put workers onto company boards. She also promised to combat the burning injustice in British society to create a union between all of Britain's citizens, promising to advocate for the ordinary working-class family and to prioritize them when it came to taxes.

Despite her initial popularity, May became a controversial figure within the Conservative Party due to her unsatisfactory Brexit plans, and she faced many mass resignations from her cabinet over Brexit problems. On 12 December 2018, 48 Conservative MPs submitted letters of no confidence to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, leading to a vote of no confidence being held. Before the vote, May said that she would not lead her party in the 2022 general election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but she won the motion with the support of 200 Conservative MPs, while 117 voted against her.